Is anyone else encountering issues authorizing donations on the new ver of MLS? It is giving me an error message basically saying that one person needs to be a clerk and one person needs to be in the bishopric, and we are...so I don't know why its saying that. Any tips or shared frustrations with this?

I'm the stake financial clerk and I had a second ward call me today about this same issue. The only thing I can find is the clerk is an assistant membership clerk according to MLS - maybe he should be the assistant financial clerk? I'm going to call Salt Lake in the morning to see what's going on.

You might have an administrator check that the clerk in question has financial permission in MLS. Just being a clerk is not enough. If the person (member of bishopric or clerk) has not been given MLS financial permission, he will not be able to authorize the batch.

If that does not solve the problem, make sure that the individuals are listed in their correct standard positions in the organization section of MLS. If either one of them has fallen off the MLS org chart, they will not be able to authorize the batch. This has reportedly happened with a few others who have upgraded to MLS 3.5 and had troubles with the organization side of the change.

This was reported by some units who were some of the early units to update to MLS 3.5. An explanation was posted in post #22 of this thread. In post #25 the recommendation is to do a unit data refresh to correct the position information in MLS. Additional information in post #28 indicates there will have to be multiple send/receives with at least a 30 minute wait after the unit data refresh request before the next send/receive. If you have any questions you are advised to contact LUS for assistance.

lajackson wrote:You might have an administrator check that the clerk in question has financial permission in MLS. Just being a clerk is not enough. If the person (member of bishopric or clerk) has not been given MLS financial permission, he will not be able to authorize the batch.

What we did when we had the problem, was to add the financial clerk calling to the the membership clerk and he is now again able to authorize the financial batches! He already had the Financial permissions, in MLS. It was only after the upgrade to 3.5 that the problem became apparent or was reinforced!

I spoke with SLC today and there are a couple of other items in addition to what has already been stated in the previous posts. The financial clerk can not be a custom position, he must be a member of the Bishopric from the std list of positions. Also the Ward Clerk, Ward Assistant Clerk and Ward Assistant Clerk - Finance can authorize a batch but a Ward Assistant Clerk - Membership can not.

SLC also indicated there are some issues in YSA stakes (like ours) where the person assigned to the financial clerk calling is not actually attached to the ward. They indicated you needed to go into system - options - user - then attach them to the unit. I haven't sat in front of the church computer to try this so I'm not exactly sureI wrote down the procedure correctly when I was on the phone with them - I'll try this next time I get over to the church.

childb1 wrote:SLC also indicated there are some issues in YSA stakes (like ours) where the person assigned to the financial clerk calling is not actually attached to the ward. They indicated you needed to go into system - options - user - then attach them to the unit.

I think what they are describing is connecting the MLS login with a membership record. Without that, MLS won't know what calling the logged in user has.

Have you searched the Wiki?
Try using a Google search by adding "site:tech.lds.org/wiki" to the search criteria.

childb1 wrote:SLC also indicated there are some issues in YSA stakes (like ours) where the person assigned to the financial clerk calling is not actually attached to the ward. They indicated you needed to go into system - options - user - then attach them to the unit.

The procedure is to first create an out of unit record that includes ordinance data. The linked article provides the steps.

Finally add them as an MLS user in the Edit > System Options | Users tab.

The part about being attached to the ward is a reference to the two options for an MLS user. The first option is "Member of Unit". The second option is "Out-of-Unit Administrator". There are only two Out-of-Unit Administrator user positions available and should not be used to give out of unit leaders MLS user access. Instead the "Member of Unit" option should be used. If a member name is not available from the list of unit members then they have not been properly been added to the unit through an out of unit record.

Note post #6 in Out of Unit Bishop thread. It seems to indicate that the steps above are done automatically when the calling is pushed to MLS. (Which is what I'd expect for at least the Bishop.) So it might be wise to check the status of those callings first.

RussellHltn wrote:Note post #6 in Out of Unit Bishop thread. It seems to indicate that the steps above are done automatically when the calling is pushed to MLS. (Which is what I'd expect for at least the Bishop.) So it might be wise to check the status of those callings first.

Except this was talking about Assistant Clerks which are setup from the unit themselves, so they will need to create an out of unit record and add the calling.